In a sign of what’s to come, Trump trolls Democrats as they debate');
document.write('An airplane above Thursday’s Democratic debate venue trailed a banner: “Socialism will kill Houston’s economy! Vote Trump 2020.” The plane was hired by the Trump campaign in a likely preview of how the president will treat his opponent: as a dangerous leftist.');
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Tomi Lahren: We Need Guns to ‘Defend Ourselves’ From Immigrants');
document.write('Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren declared on Friday that Americans need guns in order to potentially fight off unlimited immigrants coming into the United States, adding that citizens need the ability to “defend ourselves” because “we don’t know” who is coming into the country.Appearing on Fox Business Network’s Varney and Co., the conservative firebrand reacted to Democrats’ calls for stricter gun control in the wake of several mass shootings. Specifically, she took issue with Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke’s call for mandatory buybacks of assault-style weapons like the AR-15 and AK-47.“I would also remind those that might not have a use for a gun or don’t feel they have a use for a gun, many Americans do,” Lahren told Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney. “Many Americans don’t live in the suburbs, who are far away from where police can respond, and so that’s why that self-defense is so important.”And then she brought the threat of “open borders” immigration into the mix.“And all the things the Democrats want to put in place—my goodness, if they want to open our borders, you better be sure the people in Texas, the people in South Dakota, the people in the middle of this country, we are going to be armed and ready,” she exclaimed. “Because we have to have a means to defend ourselves from—who knows who’s coming in? That’s the thing, we don’t know, and we have to be able to protect ourselves.”The right-wing provocateur’s insistence that guns are needed to stave off migrants heading into the U.S. comes barely a month after the El Paso mass shooting that left 22 dead. The suspected shooter admitted that he was targeting “Mexicans” and apparently posted a racist manifesto in which he decried the “Hispanic invasion” of America.This also isn’t the first time that Lahren has fear-mongered over supposed “open borders” immigration. Earlier this year, she devoted a monologue to warning Fox viewers that an extremely high border wall was needed because immigrants are “shifty and adaptable.”After her remarks faced intense backlash that included Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro personally calling her out, Lahren took to Twitter to "apologize" for how her comments "came out."“Not what I meant & I apologize for the way it came out. I simply mean without a secure border we don’t know who is coming into our nation & those who wish to do us harm will exploit it,” she wrote Friday afternoon. “I’m NOT advocating for violence against any person, regardless of race or immigration status.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.');
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Why It’s Unlikely the McCabe Grand Jury Voted against Indictment');
document.write('In coverage of the Andrew McCabe investigation, there seems to be a lot of adding two plus two and coming up with five.The New York Times and Washington Post have reported that a grand jury met on Thursday in connection with a probe involving McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director. As I write this column on Friday evening, no indictment has been returned against McCabe. From this, and what seems to be some hopeful speculation about “hints of the case’s weakness” that could possibly have caused grand jurors to “balk,” the Times and the Post suggest that maybe the grand jury has voted against an indictment.This supposition has prompted a letter to the Justice Department from McCabe’s attorney, Michael Bromwich -- a former colleague of mine who, besides being a skilled and shrewd attorney, is a Democrat and was last seen representing Christine Blasey Ford, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser. Bromwich says he is hearing “rumors from reporters” about the filing of a “no true bill” -- i.e., a grand-jury vote rejecting a proposed indictment of McCabe.While conceding that he “do[es] not know the specific basis for the rumors,” Bromwich intuits that they must be reliable because the newspapers ran with the story. Mind you, neither the Times nor the Post claims to have been told by any grand jurors that they declined to indict McCabe; nor do they report hearing from any knowledgeable government official that a no true bill was voted. Nevertheless, McCabe’s legal team is demanding that the Justice Department disclose whether an indictment was declined and refrain from seeking an indictment in the future.This gambit, of course, floats the narrative that the case against McCabe must be crumbling -- the media reports spur the Bromwich letter, which spur more media reports, rinse and repeat. But even allowing for the erosion of standards, this is thin gruel for both news reporting and legal claims.I’ll add more detail presently. To cut to the chase, though, there is no reason at this point to infer that the grand jury has voted against indicting McCabe.Now, let’s back up.As I reiterated in a column on Thursday, the criminal probe of McCabe stems, at least in part, from an investigation by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz. That inquest centered on McCabe’s orchestration of a leak to the Wall Street Journal of investigative information -- specifically, of the fact that the FBI was investigating the Clinton Foundation. McCabe is alleged to have lied in several interviews by FBI agents. It is a crime to make false statements to investigators. IG Horowitz outlined the false-statements allegations against McCabe in a meticulous 35-page report, filed in February 2018.As is required when the IG turns up evidence of potential criminal conduct, the matter was referred to the Justice Department for consideration of whether charges should be filed. Because the IG probe and the alleged false statements occurred in Washington, the matter ended up in the United States attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.There, the U.S. attorney, Jesse Liu, has reportedly decided that there is enough evidence to charge felonies. Bromwich, however, was permitted to appeal Liu’s decision to the Justice Department -- specifically, to Jeffrey Rosen, the deputy attorney general. According to media reports, DAG Rosen was unpersuaded; the Justice Department thus advised the McCabe defense team in an email that their appeal has been rejected, and that any further questions should be taken up with U.S. Attorney Liu’s office.It was assumed when this news broke on Thursday that the Justice Department’s rejection was the last hurdle standing in the way of charges, and therefore that an indictment must be imminent. It has now been reported that, although the grand jury met on Thursday, no indictment was filed.That, however, is no reason to conclude that an indictment was sought, much less that the grand jury declined to vote one.Let me begin with the basics. No competent federal prosecutor should ever get a no true bill from a grand jury. In nearly 20 years as a prosecutor, it not only never happened to me; I could count on one hand the number of times I heard of it happening to any other prosecutor in the office, and still have fingers to spare.This is not because of the old saw that the deck is so stacked against a suspect in grand-jury proceedings that a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich. To be sure, grand-jury proceedings are very one-sided. Still, there are many cases that grand juries do not like and would not charge. Nevertheless, these cases do not result in no true bills. Instead, there is steady dialogue between the prosecutors and the grand jurors over each case. The latter ask questions and, when they are troubled, convey that fact to the former. Before submitting a proposed indictment, it is customary for the prosecutor to ask whether the grand jurors believe they have heard enough evidence, whether they would like to hear from other witnesses, whether they have other concerns, or whether they would like to consider an indictment. The prosecutor is well aware if the grand jury has doubts about the case; if there are indications that the grand jury is not inclined to vote for charges, the prosecutor simply refrains from presenting an indictment.Bear in mind, moreover, that a grand jury, unlike a trial jury, is not being asked to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Its modest task is to determine whether a significantly lower proof hurdle -- probable cause -- has been met. Also unlike a trial jury, the grand jury need not be unanimous; federal grand juries have up to 23 members, and only 12 need assent for an indictment to be approved. The grand jurors know they are not being asked to convict anyone; just to determine that there is enough evidence to warrant having a trial, at which the defendant will be given all the due-process protections the Constitution ensures. And double-jeopardy principles are not in play at the grand-jury stage as they are at trial: On the rare occasion that a federal grand jury votes a no true bill, prosecutors are free to re-present the case to the same or another grand jury.Assuming that the false statements capably outlined in the Horowitz report are the only potential crimes under consideration, it is hard to believe any grand jury could find insufficient probable cause to indict. Even McCabe is not claiming that what he told investigators was true; he seems to be saying he didn’t mean to lie (multiple times). When a suspect has committed all the acts necessary for a penal offense, and the only question is whether he had criminal intent, probable cause is usually a given.Of course, we do not know that the false statements are the only matters under consideration, or even that McCabe is the only subject of the grand jury’s investigation. It is entirely possible that the grand jury has not yet been asked to indict because relevant conduct is still under consideration -- conduct related to McCabe, related to other suspects, or both.And then there is the matter of prejudice to consider.Besides the ongoing grand-jury investigation of McCabe’s alleged false statements, the former deputy director is also among the current and former officials who are subjects of another IG probe of abuses of power in the Russia investigation. On Friday evening, IG Horowitz wrote a letter to leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, explaining that his report is substantially complete and is undergoing a classification review to determine what portions may be disclosed. We can safely assume, then, that the release of that report, which is apt to be explosive, is imminent. Meanwhile, Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham also has an ongoing investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. There have been reports that Durham is using a grand jury to gather evidence and testimony.Why are these other investigations germane to what is happening with the Washington grand jury? Well, sometimes, when a suspect is under scrutiny in multiple investigations, the Justice Department will ask the court to seal any indictments returned by the grand jury. That way, there can be no credible claim that the grand jurors in one case were swayed by allegations filed by another grand jury. Relatedly, sometimes if a grand jury’s investigation has not yet been completed, but a major development in another investigation involving the subject -- such as an IG report -- is about to occur, the Justice Department will ask the grand jury to file charges, but then seal the indictment. That way, it cannot credibly be said that the grand jury’s decision to indict was swayed by negative publicity surrounding developments in the other investigation.That is to say, there could be a dozen or more good explanations for why there has been no public announcement of a McCabe indictment. The other investigations could be complicating things. It could be that the Washington grand jury’s investigation is broader in scope than we’ve been led to believe. It could be something as simple as the availability of necessary witnesses, the availability of enough grand jurors to constitute a quorum, or the happenstance that the case is taking more time to present than the defense lawyers and media think it should.It is certainly possible that, if there were a trial, the false-statements case against McCabe would seem less compelling than Horowitz’s report makes it appear. It is conceivable that the U.S. attorney will decide against charges. Note that in the email to McCabe’s lawyers, the Justice Department said only that his appeal was rejected; DAG Rosen does not appear to have instructed U.S. Attorney Liu to file an indictment, but rather to have left that call up to her. For all we know, Liu could decide not to seek an indictment: Maybe she’ll calculate that a trial jury in Trump-hostile Washington might be too sympathetic to McCabe’s claim that he is being investigated because of a political vendetta; or maybe she’ll prove to be risk-averse regarding a case in which an acquittal would be embarrassing.Such developments would surprise me, but I wouldn’t be shocked. What would shock me, though, is if the experienced federal prosecutors handling McCabe’s case bungled their way into a no true bill. If I had to bet, I think it’s unlikely McCabe escapes indictment. If he does, though, it will be because his lawyers talked prosecutors out of seeking one, not because the grand jury declined to charge him.');
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Video shows a Model 3 automatically apply the brakes to avoid hitting a cop who ran a red light');
document.write('Tesla's automated emergency braking (AEB) system, which was first introduced in 2017, has improved markedly in a relatively short amount of time. Just a few weeks ago, for example, Tesla demonstrated its next-gen AEB system which can more ably apply the brakes when a pedestrian or cyclist is detected. With that said, we recently stumbled across a new video which shows a Tesla Model 3 abruptly hit the brakes when a police officer on a motorcycle runs a red light and turns left into oncoming traffic. The officer was presumably chasing someone but his sirens were off at the time. As you can see in the video below, the Model 3 owner begins to accelerate at a green light and doesn't see the police officer swooping in from the right-hand side. Luckily, the Model 3 detected the officer and swiftly applied the brakes. https://youtu.be/SZdRTVfRi48 Describing the incident, the Model 3 owner posted the following on his YouTube channel. > Happened this morning; I was rolling about my way when the light turns green, and out of nowhere a cop without their audio on for their sirens runs a red light. If not for Tesla's emergency stop safety features this would not have been a good day. Thank you Tesla and ElonMusk for making the Model3 the safest car ever or I might've scarred myself for life with a horrible accident.Another angle of the incident can be seen below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D3pzSWVjc&t=46s Of course, this is hardly the first time we've seen a Tesla take evasive action and avoid a potentially serious collision. In the video below, a Tesla that was rear ended quickly swerves to the left to avoid the car directly ahead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=QVdTAwU07Jc');
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White House says bin Laden son killed in US operation');
document.write('The White House announced Saturday that Hamza bin Laden , the son of the late al-Qaida leader who had become an increasingly prominent figure in the terrorist organization, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. A statement issued in President Donald Trump\'s name gave no further details, such as when Hamza bin Laden was killed or how the United States had confirmed his death. Administration officials would provide no more information beyond the three-sentence statement from the White House.');
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Second British-Australian woman jailed in Iran identified as Middle East researcher Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert');
document.write('A British-Australian woman who has been sentenced to 10 years in a notorious Iranian prison has been identified as Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a Cambridge-educated academic specialising in Middle Eastern politics. Dr Moore-Gilbert, who was working as a lecturer and researcher for Melbourne University's Asia Institute and has published work on authoritarian governance and activism in the Middle East, was jailed in October 2018. However, her detention had not been reported in case it harmed the prospects of her release. On Saturday, the Australian government confirmed Dr Moore-Gilbert was being held in prison in Iran. A statement from the family of Dr Moore-Gilbert, who is incarcerated in Evin prison, said they were in close contact with Australian authorities on the matter. "Our family thanks the Government and the University of Melbourne for their ongoing support at this distressing and sensitive time. "We believe that the best chance of securing Kylie's safe return is through diplomatic channels." It is not known what Dr Moore-Gilbert was charged with, but 10-year terms are routinely given in Iran for spying. She is one of two British-Australian women whose detentions in Iran have come to light in the past week. Jolie King with her partner Mark Firkin Jolie King, a travel blogger, and her Australian fiancé Mark Firkin were arrested near a military site in Jajrood near Tehran on August 9, it was revealed on Thursday. They had reportedly been using a drone to film aerial footage in the area. They too have been sent to Evin prison, the main detention centre for Iran's political prisoners, which also houses 41-year-old Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian mother of one who is midway through a five-year sentence on spying charges. Tehran has pursued a campaign of detaining Iranian and dual nationality academics in recent years, raising fears the Islamic Republic is using them as diplomatic leverage. The Australian government has said it is lobbying Tehran to ensure all three are appropriately looked after. Iran is believed to be holding the trio captive in the hope of exchanging one of them for an Iranian imprisoned in the US on charges of evading American sanctions. Tensions between Britain and Iran escalated dramatically after it emerged the women were being held in the first recent case of Tehran arresting British citizens who do not also hold Iranian nationality. Sources said Tehran sees the women as bargaining chips to secure the release of Negar Ghodskani, a 40-year-old Iranian woman facing jail in the US after pleading guilty to a conspiracy to export prohibited technology to Iran. Ghodskani was arrested in Australia in 2017 at the request of US government and gave birth to a baby boy while in custody in Adelaide. She was extradited to the US and now faces five years in federal prison. Negar Ghodskani Credit: AP While Iran has not commented publicly on any of the arrests, in April the country's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, proposed swapping Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe for Ms Ghodskani. According to the University of Melbourne's website, Dr Moore-Gilbert "specialises in Middle Eastern politics, with a particular focus on the Arab Gulf states," and has published work on the 2011 Arab uprisings, authoritarian governance, and on the role of new media technologies in political activism. In 2018 she was awarded a grant to investigate "Iran’s relationship with Bahrain’s Shi’a after the Arab Uprisings". Dr Moore-Gilbert's LinkedIn profile shows her first degree came in Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge, where she also completed her Master of Arts. Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne said she has raised the cases of the three prisoners "many times" with Mr Zarif, and denied the arrests were politically motivated. "We have no reason to think that these arrests are connected to international concern over Iran's nuclear programme, United Nations sanction enforcement or maritime security concerning the safety of civilian shipping," Senator Payne said. What appears to be the Iranian oil tanker Adrian Darya 1 off the coast of Tartus, Syria, Credit: Reuters News of the three prisoners has come amid a downturn in relations between Britain and Iran, sparked by issues including the Royal Marines' seizure near Gibraltar in July of an Iranian oil tanker, the Grace I. Iran responded by seizing British-flagged oil tanker the Stena Impero. While Britain released the Iranian tanker, the Stena Impero is still being held. Australia also said in July that it would join the US and the UK in protecting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz from Iranian threats. Relations between Tehran and the West, especially the United States, have deteriorated significantly since the Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions, prompting Iran to ramp up restricted enrichment.');
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Ancient Handholding Skeletons Are Men but Italy Won’t Say Gay');
document.write('Archeo ModenaROME—In 2009, the straight world swooned when archaeologists discovered two ancient skeletons from between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. holding hands in a grave in Modena, Italy. They were dubbed the “Lovers of Modena” and have become synonymous with heterosexual romance, their image now often used in Italy to symbolize undying love.When they were discovered, archeologists said the bones were in such a state of decay that the usual genetic-based methods used in confirming the biological sex of ancient remains was of no use. Still, one of the figures was slightly smaller than the other, so it was assumed they were male and female. The individuals did not die in situ—their hands were placed holding each other's by whoever buried them, most likely to represent a relationship between the two people. Eleven people were buried in the cemetery where they were found, all initially thought to be soldiers and victims of an ancient war, based on wounds consistent with battles. The consensus among anthropologists was that the presumed female hand-holder was the lover of one of the warriors.This week, scientists with the University of Bologna announced the “Lovers of Modena” were actually both biologically male, thanks to a revolutionary process they used to examine tooth enamel. A certain peptide that is present only in males was present in all 16 teeth extracted from both skeletons. The scientists also found that only one of the 11 individuals buried in the cemetery was female, and she wasn’t holding anyone’s hand. Then, suddenly, the hand-holders weren’t lovers at all: Italian archaeologists insisted that surely they were brothers or cousins who died in battle. Archaeologist Federico Lugli, who led the Bologna study, conceded that while it was impossible to know if the two men were lovers, he highly doubted it. “In late-ancient times it is unlikely that homosexual love could be recognized so clearly by the people who prepared the burial,” he told The Daily Beast by email. “Given that the two individuals have similar ages, they could be relatives, probably siblings or cousins.”Homosexuality was well documented in Roman times. Emperor Nero married women to bear children, but he had sex with men for pleasure. He publicly married two men, Pythagoras and, years later, Sporo, who was castrated and made to wear a woman’s gown during the ceremony, according to historical accounts by Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, whose writings account for much of what we know about ancient Rome. The ancient Roman Empire legal tome Lex Scantinia sets out a series of regulations for men having sex with other men, including that freeborn Romans—that is to say those who were not slaves or war prisoners—could not take a passive role when having sex with a man. But by no means did it make same sex relationships illegal and it was quite common for noble Romans to have male lovers in addition to wives who fulfilled the traditional role of childbearing. In the case of the skeletons of the Lovers of Modena, it seems historians are not willing to concede that two individuals who were once thought to be romantically linked when they were presumed to be male and female are likely not now that their biological sex is the same. “The burial of two men hand in hand was certainly not a common practice in the late-ancient era,” Lugli says. “We believe that this choice symbolizes a particular relationship between the two individuals, but we do not know the nature of it.”There are plenty of examples of ancient figures buried in all manner of embrace—most of which have been positively identified through genetic sampling as male and female, but not all. The embracing skeletons found in Petrykiv village in western Ukraine are thought to be from a woman who committed suicide to be buried with her man, but the analysis was made based on jewelry and size. In 2015, a couple of 6,000-year-old spooning skeletons were found in Greece, though no one has any idea yet why they were in such a position. Their bones were identified as biologically male and female. Usually, when couples are found buried together, the first question is why they died at the same time and if one was sacrificed to be buried with the other. Now, thanks to the new dental enamel science, archaeologists can go back to other ancient lovers to find out more about who they were. “At present there are no other burials of this type,” Lugli says of the two male hand-holders. “In the past several graves were found with pairs of individuals laid hand in hand, but in all cases it was a man and a woman. The link between the two individuals of the Modena burial, instead, remains a mystery.” Or perhaps the evidence is right in front of them. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.');
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Ohio gamer sentenced to 15 months prison in 'swatting' case');
document.write('An Ohio gamer upset about a $1.50 bet while playing Call of Duty: WWII online was sentenced Friday to 15 months in prison for recruiting a prankster to make a bogus emergency call that resulted in the fatal shooting of a Kansas man by police. Casey Viner, 19, of North College Hill, Ohio, also is restricted from gaming activity for two years while he is on supervised release after serving his prison term, U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren said in announcing the sentence. Viner repeatedly gulped and appeared crestfallen as the judge announced his sentencing decision.');
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US officials warn of danger of feral hogs heading across the border from Canada');
document.write('US officials have warned that feral hogs heading across the border from Canada may pose a danger to the local environment. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that sightings of the feral animals on the US-Canadian border have increased in recent years. At least eight of the wild animals have been sighted just north of Lincoln County, Montana, this summer, officials said. Several agencies, including Wildlife Services, the Montana Invasive Species Council, the National Feral Swine Program and the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks department fear the wild pigs could cause significant damage to the landscape. Officials warned the animals can often be aggressive, breed rapidly, and difficult to catch. The feral pigs pose a risk to the local agriculture industries as they often destroy farm land and crops as they root for food. They also have the potential to spread diseases to domestic livestock, although no disease has been detected in the team in Canada. Female hogs typically have more than a dozen piglets in each litter and full grown hogs can weigh anywhere between 120lb to 400lbs. Dale Nolte, from the USDA’s National Feral Swine Program, described the prospect as “a disaster”. “Multiple people say that if we were to design an invasive species that would do the most widespread damage, feral swine aren’t too far off from being the perfect specimen,” he told local newspaper Daily Inter Lake. Ryan Brook, an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan, blamed the southern migration of the feral pigs on poor monitoring systems in the province, which are allowing numbers - and the spread of the animals - to grow unchecked. “Saskatchewan is a very high functioning pig factory and the populations are exploding with very minimal efforts to control them,” he told the Daily Inter Lake. “Lack of serious action in Saskatchewan is the single greatest threat to Montana.” Legit question for rural Americans - How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?— Willie McNabb (@WillieMcNabb) August 4, 2019 The warning of a potential hog invasion prompted amusement on social media, with users highlighting a viral tweet last month by a man arguing assault weapons were necessary to manage the feral populations. “How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?” he asked on Twitter, prompting widespread mockery at the time.');
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Iran inks deal to develop gas field in tense Gulf');
document.write('Two Iranian companies signed a $440 million agreement Saturday to develop a gas field in the sensitive Gulf, with the oil ministry saying it showed arch-foe the United States could not stop the country with sanctions. Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the deal reached between two government-owned firms, Pars Oil and Gas Company and PetroPars, to develop the Balal field would be the first of many. Tensions have soared in the Gulf since last year when the US began reimposing sanctions on Iran after unilaterally withdrawing from a 2015 deal that put curbs on its nuclear programme.');
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Biden sparks outrage after suggesting black people don't know how to raise children: 'Put the record player on at night'');
document.write('Taking several turns and going down multiple tangents, Joe Biden could not seem to answer a simple question about the legacy of slavery during the third Democratic debates.The former vice president mentioned record players, discussed education and talked about bringing social workers into homes in low-income communities when debate moderator Linsey Davis asked him: “What responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?”');
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Turkey orders arrest of 223 military personnel over suspected Gulen links: state media');
document.write('Turkey has ordered the arrest of 223 serving military personnel across the country and in the breakaway state of Northern Cyprus over suspected links to a network Ankara accuses of organizing an attempted coup in 2016, state media said on Saturday. Authorities are seeking the suspects across 49 provinces in Turkey and in Northern Cyprus, state broadcaster TRT Haber said.');
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Apple’s 10.2-inch iPad hasn’t even been released yet, but you can already save $30');
document.write('Well what do we have here, bargain hunters? There was a time not too long ago when Apple products almost never went on sale, let alone brand new Apple products. Those days are long gone, thankfully, and we've got a fantastic deal to share with you today on an Apple product so new that it hasn't even been released yet. Head over to Amazon and you'll find the new 7th-Generation Apple iPad with 128GB of storage on sale for $399.99, a healthy $30 discount from the $430 you'll pay if you preorder it from Apple. There's no telling how long this discount will be available though, so hurry up!Here are some highlights from the product page: * 10.2-inch Retina display * A10 Fusion chip * Touch ID fingerprint sensor * 8MP back camera, 1.2MP FaceTime HD front camera * Stereo speakers');
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Venezuelan opposition leader denies ties to criminal gang');
document.write('Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó rejected allegations Friday that he has ties to an illegal armed group in Colombia, as officials launched an investigation based on photos appearing in social media purportedly showing him posing with members of the gang. The pictures were allegedly taken in late February when Guaidó crossed into Colombia and made a surprise appearance at a concert organized by billionaire Richard Branson aimed at helping deliver humanitarian aid to Venezuela. Government officials loyal to President Nicolás Maduro are holding up the photos as proof that Guaidó\'s covert journey was orchestrated with the help of a Colombian criminal gang known as the Rastrojos, an accusation he denies.');
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Jeered over attacks, S.Africa's president apologises at Mugabe funeral');
document.write('South Africa\'s President Cyril Ramaphosa was jeered and whistled at on Saturday during his speech at Zimbabwe ex-leader Robert Mugabe\'s funeral before he apologised for recent xenophobic attacks. At least 12 people have been killed this month in a surge in violence and mob attacks against foreign-owned businesses in and around Johannesburg, South Africa\'s largest city. A wave of jeers, boos and whistles interrupted Ramaphosa at the Harare national stadium as he started his eulogy at the state funeral for Mugabe, who died age 95 last week.');
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'Difficult to see' if Iran breached Syria oil sale agreement, Gibraltar chief minister says');
document.write('Gibraltar’s leader attempted to deescalate the crisis with Iran over the fate of an oil tanker on Friday, saying it was “difficult to see” whether Tehran breached an agreement not to sell its oil to Syria. Iran made assurances to a court in Gibraltar that it would not deliver the seized supertanker’s two million barrels of crude oil to the Syrian regime in order to secure its release. After it was freed on Aug 18, the renamed Adrian Darya 1 sailed around the eastern Mediterranean for over a week before heading towards the Syrian coast and turning off its transponder on Sept 2. Iran claims it sold the oil to an unnamed private company. Maritime trackers say it is likely the Adrian Darya 1's contents were off-loaded to Syria through smaller vessels. Britain and the US have said such a move is in violation of European Union and US sanctions and breaches the agreement. Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s chief minister, however, said on Friday that “it is difficult to see whose word you’d take for it”. The British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero is still being held by Iran Credit: Morteza Akhoondi/Tasnim News Agency via AP “You can see from the images that the oil has ended up in Syria but that’s not to say that there’s a breach of the undertaking [by Iran],” Mr Picardo said. “We did not have an undertaking that the oil would not end up in Syria. We had an undertaking from the Iranian government that they would not sell the oil to any EU sanctioned entity,” he said. British commandos on July 4 seized the vessel, then called the Grace 1, on suspicion that it was en route to Syria in breach of EU sanctions. Officials claim Iran gave as many as five separate undertakings that it would not proceed with its original sales plan. Iran’s envoy to the UK, who was summoned by the British foreign ministry over the matter, on Wednesday said Adrian Darya 1’s oil cargo was sold at sea to a third party, denying Tehran had broken assurances it gave. He also said the private buyer of the oil “sets the sale destination”. "It is now clear that Iran has breached these assurances and that the oil has been transferred to Syria and Assad’s murderous regime,” a Foreign Office statement said. “Iran’s actions represent an unacceptable violation of international norms and the UK will raise the issue at the United Nations later this month.” The development came amid heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf. EU diplomats warned yesterday that Britain's decision to join a US-led naval mission in the Gulf has delayed European efforts to set up a maritime force to ensure safe shipping in the Strait of Hormuz separate from American patrols. British-Australian citizen Jolie King and her boyfriend Mark Firkin are currently detained in Iran Credit: Instagram Britain and France proposed a European-led maritime force in July that was to be independent of the United States. They won support from Denmark, Italy and Spain, who were wary of an American mission for fear of making US-Iranian strains worse. The proposal was announced after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker in the Strait, in what was then widely seen as retaliation for the seizure of an Iranian tanker in Gibraltar by British marines. The British-flagged Stena Impero is still being held by Iran, although Tehran has signalled it could release it soon. Relations between the UK and Iran have worsened in recent days amid the news two dual British-Australian nationals have been arrested in Iran. Jolie King, a dual citizen, and her Australian boyfriend Mark Firkin, were travelling from western Australia to London through Iran when they were arrested for reportedly flying a drone. A third detainee, a former Cambridge-educated academic, has not been named. Miss King is being held in the same ward of Evin prison as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker charged with espionage. Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, told the Telegraph: “She has been there for a few weeks. She came in from solitary very scared. As that is a very traumatic experience. “She’s gradually learning to trust the others. Nazanin told her family that she has a very good sense of humour.”');
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India sets up fund to complete stalled housing projects');
document.write('India on Saturday announced a series of measures to revive the housing sector and boost exports as the government tries to kick-start an economy hit by a lending crisis and a slowdown in demand. A fund worth 100 billion rupees ($1.41 billion) will be available to complete unfinished affordable and middle income housing projects, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. An equal amount of funding will come from the private sector or from a government insurance company, she added.');
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NY finds $1B in hidden transfers by family behind OxyContin');
document.write('The family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma used Swiss and other hidden accounts to transfer $1 billion to themselves, New York's attorney general contends in court papers filed Friday. New York — asking a judge to enforce subpoenas of companies, banks and advisers to Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family — said it has uncovered the previously unknown wire transfers among family members, entities they control and several financial institutions. The transfers bolster allegations by New York and other states that the Sacklers worked to shield their wealth in recent years because of mounting worries about legal threats.');
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UK PM claims huge progress in Brexit talks');
document.write('Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Saturday he was making a \"huge amount of progress\" towards a Brexit deal with the EU, in an interview in which he compared Britain to the Incredible Hulk. \"It\'s going to take a lot of work between now and October 17\" when EU leaders gather for their final summit before Britain\'s scheduled exit from the bloc, he told the Mail on Sunday newspaper. In an odd analogy, Johnson compared Britain to the comic book character Hulk.');
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Every top Democrat can beat Trump. Their unique strategies will determine who gets that shot');
document.write('Each of the five leading 2020 Democratic candidates can beat the president in a general election, according to the latest national match-up polls. But first, they will need to secure the party’s nomination in a hotly contested primary season that started with more than two dozen hopefuls. They're each using very different tactics to do so.Those five candidates — Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg — joined each other on Thursday night for the third Democratic debates, along with five additional candidates currently polling beneath them: Cory Booker, Andrew Yang, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro.');
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Anti-Semitism: The Fight That Never Flags');
document.write('In the course of a review of The Plot against America, Philip Roth’s dystopian novel that has the United States adopting a form of Nazi rule after the election of America-Firster Charles Lindbergh, the Australian writer Clive James confessed to never quite suspending his disbelief in this lurid alternative history. The United States, wrote James, “will never be free of racial prejudice for the same reason that it will never enshrine racial prejudice in anything like the Nuremberg Laws: it’s a free country.” He pithily concluded that “the insuperable problem with The Plot against America is that America is against the plot.”Bari Weiss, a staff writer and editor for the opinion section of the New York Times, used to hold the same iron conviction that the United States would never succumb to the plague of anti-Semitism. In her slim new book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, Weiss confesses she is no longer so sanguine about the status of the “Jewish question” in the land of the free, even if the symptoms of a resurgent anti-Semitism aren’t as acute as they are in the Old World. A fair reading of the times suggests that her newfound anxiety is prudent.Not so long ago, sounding the alarm about the Jewish place in American life would have been dismissed as hyperbolic or hysterical. By the standards of Jewish history, the asylum discovered in the United States after the Shoah was an almost unimaginable gift. Weiss recounts that growing up on American soil around the turn of the 21st century, members of her community knew they were “the lucky ones.” The faint echoes of anti-Semitism were at a safe remove in this secular republic so profoundly shaped by its confrontations with both the Nazi abattoir and the Soviet gulag. “Survival had no longer been our concern,” she writes. In America, the sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah managed to flourish “like no other diaspora in history,” even if ample evidence of the vehemence ranged against their tribe could be found in the foreign press: pictures of buses blown apart by suicide bombers in Jerusalem, the YouTube video showing Daniel Pearl’s gruesome beheading in Karachi, firebombed synagogues in Stockholm, Jewish cemeteries desecrated in Paris, or attacks on those wearing a kippah in Berlin.Weiss suspects that the failure of anti-Semitism to take hold on this side of the Atlantic can be credited to the American regime’s early efforts to inoculate the country against this venomous mania. In 1790, George Washington gave his assurance to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., that American Jews would “possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.” In the same letter, America’s first president promised that the new republic would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” As a nation founded on the universalist claims of the Declaration of Independence, the United States has seemed, for all its flaws, particularly ill-suited to federally sanctioned prejudice. In addition, the “special nature of America,” in Weiss’s telling, includes an attachment to the Hebraic tradition as reflected in the dizzying array of biblical place names that dot its landscape. This, in turn, has nourished America’s long-standing alliance with the State of Israel. All of this has predisposed America to be “a New Jerusalem for the Jewish people.”This is not to deny that American Jews occasionally found themselves (as the author did, growing up in Pittsburgh) on the receiving end of rancid jokes about “picking up pennies,” along with creepy “questions about horns.” More often than not, however, these insults didn’t escalate into injuries, in large part because this ill-concealed prejudice was understood by mainstream society to be anathema to American politics and philosophy. It was tempting, therefore, to write off these churlish anti-Jewish outbursts as nothing more than “vestiges of an uglier, more violent past.” Any suggestion that they were harbingers of a resurgent chauvinism threatening Jewish life and limb would have been greeted with mirth.Weiss’s visceral confidence that Jews (along with other religious minorities) would continue to enjoy the fruits of an apparently eternal American exceptionalism was shattered when her kehilla, or community, was visited by evil. In October 2018, eleven Jews were murdered in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh where Weiss became a bat mitzvah. In that event, her hometown temple earned the awful distinction of suffering the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. The perpetrator of this heinous act was decidedly “homegrown,” to use the contemporary argot, attacking a synagogue that had opened its doors to persecuted people of all faiths as part of National Refugee Shabbat, a project of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.Those who insisted that this was a singular episode of mass murder would be proved wrong a few months later when another white supremacist struck a synagogue in San Diego. The roots of anti-Jewish violence (if not yet anti-Jewish pogroms) that had long found infertile soil in the United States at last discovered a more hospitable patch of terrain.Anyone familiar with the sordid record of fear and loathing toward Jews knows that severing these roots will be a task fraught with difficulty. (If you are not familiar, procuring a copy of How to Fight Anti-Semitism would be a very good place to start.) The first problem in understanding this complex phenomenon is that Judaism itself is properly understood not merely as a religion or an ethnicity, but as a people and a civilization. It follows, as Weiss succinctly explains, that there is no single reason for anti-Semitism.Considering this hatred, one cannot fail to be struck — as Jean-Paul Sartre was in his essay “Anti-Semite and Jew” — by its lack of any recognizable logic save “the logic of passion.” Call me unlucky, but in the past year alone, in places as diverse as Dubai, Beirut, and Istanbul, your obedient servant has encountered this fit of illogic at close range. Over dinner or drinks, elite members of these societies (anti-Semitism frequently infects the pseudo-intellectual) unburdened themselves of the opinion that the official narrative about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is a cheap ruse, and al-Qaeda’s holy warriors were not responsible for this obscenity. (No prizes for guessing which intelligence service of a certain Levantine nation was fingered instead.)This ancient animosity would not have proved so dynamic and durable down the centuries if it weren’t essentially protean. Though it’s often thought of as a neurosis, Saul Bellow insisted that it was a psychosis. It involves no exaggeration to say that the Weltanschauung of Jew-hatred is so replete with contradiction as to be schizophrenic.After originating in Egypt, Judeophobia has been maintained as a fashion by such discrepant forces as medieval Christianity and modern Islam. In the 20th century, virulent forms of the virus broke out in the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church (the former being in sympathy with fascism and the latter blessing the execrable Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion that is the source of many conspiracy theories relating to the Jews, which were later reproduced in Hamas’s charter). In its various permutations, anti-Semitism has conscripted the Jew as a nefarious partisan and practitioner of capitalism and, alternately, of Bolshevism. (As Marx proved, not even being born a Jew according to the strict matrilineal principles of Jewish law is a guarantee against indulging this primitive stupidity.) Jews have been portrayed as vicious race contaminators as well as an all-powerful tribe standing apart from society. Anti-Semitism is not, in other words, a run-of-the-mill prejudice akin to racism against, say, “black” Africans. Rather, in the words of the historian Peter Hayes, it is “a kind of superstition” that conceives of a universal conspiracy in which the Jews are the sinister vanguard.How to Fight Anti-Semitism focuses more on present than past manifestations of this “disease of the mind,” as Weiss dubs it, in echo of the historian Paul Johnson. The primary targets of her sharp pen are not the Gospel of John or even Marxist revolutionaries (it’s not for nothing that the German socialist August Bebel described anti-Semitism as the socialism of fools). Anti-Semitism has spread and mutated, appearing in the guise of a modern theocratic fascism while also poisoning diverse political movements in the West.As Weiss is fully aware, her book is most apt to court controversy by providing a political guide to these fresh outbreaks of anti-Semitism. She begins rather dauntingly by noting that Jews in the West, especially in Europe, are confronted by a “three-headed dragon.” First, there is an antagonistic environment for Jews, thanks in large measure to the rapid growth of Islamism on the Old Continent. Second, there is ideological vilification by the political Left, which increasingly regards Israel as an illegitimate state serving no other purpose than as a bastion of Western (read: white) colonialism. Third, there is a recrudescence of reactionary populism on the political right that, while often professing sympathy for Israel, evinces a fervent commitment to blood-and-soil politics that seldom ends well for Jews.Not everybody will agree with Weiss’s portrait of the hydra-headed enemy, which itself points to part of the problem. The tribal impulse in our political life has grown so pronounced that it has overwhelmed a common civic culture, rendering many classical liberals politically homeless. There is a well-oiled habit among the political class and in the press of excusing obvious, often deplorable, transgressions by one’s “own” side. The acid test for fighting anti-Semitism, as with so many other derangements, is to face it down with equal enthusiasm and commitment when it flares up on one’s team — or, better yet, to be more discriminating about which team one belongs to in the first place.The Left The true anti-Semite is easy enough to spot on the lunatic fringe, but it’s another matter if you’re not aware of the existence of plural lunatic fringes. Most children of the Enlightenment have been trained to discern this toxic ideology when religious fanatics inveigh against the Jews’ supposed responsibility for the murder of Christ or when voices of the “alt-right” curse the Jews for deriving from the racial gutter. But symptoms of the toxin are no less definitive when one hears of an occult world government whose “lobby” distorts U.S. foreign policy and global financial markets, or is treated to the filthy argument that, in its methods of warfare against Hamas — a terrorist organization as well as a regime based in large measure on the desire to stamp international Jewry out of existence — the Israel Defense Forces have taken a leaf from Hitler’s book.As the Democratic party’s center of gravity has moved sharply to the left in recent years, the anti-imperialist mindset has gained traction, attributing the ills of the Middle East to British and French (and, latterly, Israeli and American) power. This political evolution has been exemplified by the now-famous freshman congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who have brought critical (if maladroit) scrutiny to bear against the U.S.-Israel alliance. Another member of “the Squad,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has openly consorted with Jeremy Corbyn of Britain’s Labour party, a fellow traveler with Islamist movements whose tenure as Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition has been marred by one anti-Semitic scandal after another.At its worst, this mindset is prone to detecting arcane Jewish manipulations behind all earthly power. More commonly, the insurgent progressive perspective masquerades as merely anti-Zionist, conceiving of Jews as part of the coalition of the oppressor while Israel, “the Jew among the nations,” is treated with frenzied derision. In addition to being indicted as the sole party responsible for the conflict with the Palestinians, and therefore almost entirely to blame for their miserable plight, Israel is portrayed as a uniquely malevolent force in the world. The dramatic rise of the BDS movement (deemed by the German Bundestag, not unjustifiably, as anti-Semitic) across the West today capably demonstrates that these vicious and extreme detractors of the Zionist entity are on the march.This palpable and supercharged hostility has taken by surprise many liberal Zionists — as appears to have been the case for Weiss — who are given to assuming that the Left instinctively takes the side of the underdog, the immigrant, and the outsider. Although the Left has largely come by this reputation honestly, it does little good for Jews, who, despite being the principal target of hate crimes in the United States and most of Europe, scarcely qualify as an oppressed minority in the eyes of today’s Left. Weiss is keen to announce and decry progressives’ evolving hierarchy of privilege, whereby Zionists (i.e., the vast majority of worldwide Jewry) generally occupy the top rung as defenders of a colonial state embodying the “white man’s burden.” (This narrative seldom accounts for the Mizrahi Jews, more than half of Israel’s population, whose roots lie in the Middle East.)The progressive temper does not merely direct suspicion and ire toward Israel and all its works but shows every sign of failing to recognize an enemy even when it meets one. The mainstream Left is proving increasingly blind to the clear and present danger posed by Islamist ideology and, worse, often lends aid and comfort to its cause. This vile tendency crops up regularly, but two prominent examples include the Southern Poverty Law Center (which designated the liberal Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz an “anti-Muslim extremist” and was later compelled to pay damages) and the Women’s March (whose unscrupulous leaders Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour embraced the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan).Weiss does not make the common mistake of conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. This has always been a self-refuting standard, since, as Weiss reminds us, the earliest anti-Zionists to scorn Theodor Herzl’s dream of der judenstaat were themselves Jewish (not only the left-wing critics of Palestinian-Arab dispossession but the Orthodox sects that regarded Jewish political sovereignty prior to the arrival of the messiah as blasphemous). Incidentally, some Zionists have also been quite nasty anti-Semites, including British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour whose famous 1917 declaration “viewed with favor” a Jewish home in the mandate of Palestine in order to empty Britain of its Jewish population.Nor does Weiss argue that stinging dissent from the Israeli government, let alone a harmlessly critical HBO mini-series, constitutes anti-Semitism, or even anti-Zionism. Nonetheless, it has become difficult in practice to disentangle anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism, given that manifestations of both often share the purpose of demonization and delegitimization of the only Jewish state. (By contrast, try to imagine, if you can, a movement of similar breadth and depth aimed against another “faith-based” state, Pakistan, that was similarly cobbled together out of rival ethno-religious nationalisms amid the collapsing British imperial order in 1947.)Weiss shrewdly analogizes modern anti-Zionism to the situation of a young couple weighing whether to have a child. All of the credible and practical concerns fall away once they have the baby, or else the parents are behaving immorally. Such is the case today, when the State of Israel is an established fact. To have questioned or opposed the project of building a Jewish state in the Jews’ ancestral homeland before the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947 is one thing. It is quite another to endorse tearing down that living, breathing state today, in full knowledge of the enormity that would ensue. The offense here is compounded when those agitating to make Israel a pariah state demonstrate little knowledge or concern about formulating and executing a strategy to confront bellicose regimes and militant Islamist groups that imperil the Jewish state and the civilized world.The Right In addition to being more diffuse than many imagine, the lunatic fringe is also thicker than is generally understood. Weiss is justly concerned by the spike in violence against Jews and other minorities from the identitarian right and about the grisly ideology behind it. After some years of dormancy, in August 2017 it flared into the open in Charlottesville when a “Unite the Right” rally of white supremacists gathered at the University of Virginia to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Carrying tiki torches, these doughy goons shouted the slogans: “Blood and soil,” “White Lives Matter,” and, in a nod to the ancient anti-Semitic notion of the Jew as the evil puppeteer, “Jews will not replace us.” Lest we forget, President Trump’s reflexive response to this wicked nonsense was to put in a good word for such “very fine people.”Weiss’s handling of the ugly movement known as the “alt-right” is fairly comprehensive, and the reader emerges on guard against this ethno-religious movement in our midst. She is also alert to the threat posed by unsavory authoritarian populists across the West who, though generally willing to dispel any impression of being motivated by racism, aim to turn their societies away from the liberal tradition. In either of these guises, the chauvinist Right tends to regard Muslims as the “other” and casts Israel (in Weiss’s wry description) as a “kind of anti-Muslim Sparta” rather than a pluralist democracy preserving its Jewish character even under existential threat.The longer Israel and America remain in the saddle of populist nationalism, the more this crude description of Israel risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. (As Weiss must know, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank will eventually become all but irrevocable, at which point the Zionist project will cease to be recognizable as a democratic Jewish state.) Stuck in a defensive crouch, Israel’s conservative partisans in both countries tend to dismiss liberal scruples about the Israeli government’s innumerable follies and injustices. They cheer Prime Minister Netanyahu’s no-holds-barred posture against the Left, and the actions taken in self-defense against a militant Sunni gang in Gaza and a swelling “Shiite crescent” across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. These conservatives also cite the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, among other items, as reason to embrace Trump for being in the running for “the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House.”Among Zionists, Weiss helpfully distinguishes between “the David people and the Goliath people.” The former think that Zion is always under siege, that any Israeli weakness will be exploited by its enemies, and that most other considerations are secondary. The latter think that Israel has accumulated such a preponderance of power that its vulnerability has been greatly diminished, and that illiberal aspects of Israel’s character (consider last year’s Jewish nation-state law that privileges Israel’s sectarian features over its secular pluralist claims) are sapping precious legitimacy at home and abroad. Weiss’s conclusion that each of these tendencies contains partial truths is fair enough as far as it goes, which is not far enough. In reality, the difference cannot be so evenly split.As long as the political Right believes Israel’s society and government require an unqualified defense, the David people cannot be acquitted on the charge of loving the Jewish state “not wisely, but too well.” By refusing to hold Israel to its own standards as an exemplar of liberal democracy, such ostensible friends are rendering a grave disservice to the Zionist cause. Weiss can hardly be counted among them. She posits that “supporting Israel . . . means demanding that Israel live up to its ideals,” but never gets around to spelling out just what those ideals dictate in relation to the pressing need to reach a decent accommodation with the Palestinians. To be fair, Weiss does mention in passing the settlement enterprise as a valid point of criticism of Israel, and not a species of the phenomenon that is her subject. What’s more, she registers a genuine sense of “despair” when observing Palestinians waiting at checkpoints, and says that Palestinian suffering in the course of occupation constitutes a “stain” on her Jewish soul.Nonetheless, the dogma of a “chosen people” has enabled a strident intolerance among many of Weiss’s coreligionists that demands a more thoroughgoing critique than it receives in How to Fight Anti-Semitism. This is not because anti-Semitism is a response to the behavior of Jews (it absolutely is not). Rather, Israel’s “accidental empire” of systematic land seizure in biblical Judea and Samaria is premised on a “civilization state” model of nationalism profoundly at odds with the liberal ideal that will render the case for Israel increasingly toxic.Many years ago, Yehoshua Leibowitz, the editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, warned of a “Judeo-Nazi” tendency among the messianic settlers who moved onto the occupied West Bank after 1967. One need not go that far to recognize that Israel’s defensive occupation of the post-1967 territories has unloosed a xenophobic current that not only serves to deprive Palestinians of their rights and sovereignty, but also cements sectarian and racist feelings within Israel proper. (To instance one example, courtesy of the Israel Democracy Institute, 70 percent of Jewish Israelis now oppose appointing Arab Israelis to cabinet posts.)Weiss appears more panicked by the related matter of Israel’s new nationalist allies (e.g., Victor Orbán’s government in Hungary) who are self-proclaimed illiberal democrats and give off more than a whiff of anti-Semitism. Weiss also passionately criticizes the rabbinate’s suffocating influence among Israeli Jews, and scorches Netanyahu’s unfathomably crude move to pull the racist party Otzma Yehudit into his governing coalition. This is all to the good, but the failure to offer a straightforward denunciation of Israel’s occupation of land claimed and inhabited by Palestinians is a baffling omission in a book about fighting anti-Semitism — again, not because Jewish settlement beyond the Green Line is in any way related to anti-Semitism, but because it weakens Israel’s moral defenses when it needs them most.If the populist-nationalist view of Israel continues to dominate the right side of the ballot in both Israel and America, and if that view continues to command electoral majorities, it will help vindicate the Left’s suspicion that Israel is in essence an ethnocracy, or will soon evolve into one. As progressive politics lurches to the left, the Israeli Right will find new support in subverting democratic institutions and entrenching the occupation. In place of a smaller, plucky Israel punching above its weight against fearsome enemies while upholding a laudable multiethnic democracy, the cycle of dueling left and right populisms risks helping to foster a Greater Israel that loses sight of the liberal Zionism that birthed it. If this comes to pass, it will be a moral and political catastrophe, no matter where America’s embassy in Israel is situated.Conclusion As I turned the final page of How to Fight Anti-Semitism, my mind returned to a vignette that Weiss had earlier extracted from Joachim Fest’s memoir of growing up in interwar Berlin, Not I. Fest recalls his father, a pious Catholic and adamant anti-Nazi, begging his Jewish friends to leave Hitler’s Germany before it was too late. Fest’s father heaped praise on those in this dark time who resolutely persisted in classifying themselves “German citizens of Jewish faith”: “In their self-discipline, their quiet civility and unsentimental brilliance, they had really been the last Prussians.” They had “only one failing,” he said, “which became their undoing: being overwhelmingly governed by their heads, they had, in tolerant Prussia, lost their instinct for danger, which had preserved them through the ages.”Only a small number of Jews in the Third Reich lived up to the Jewish reputation for pessimism and understood what lay in wait for them. Victor Klemperer was one of them: The German-Jewish diarist whose writings eerily predicted the Holocaust said that the fate of the Jews was to be a “seismic people.” It would be rash for Jews anywhere, even in America, to allow this premonitory instinct to atrophy, and Weiss deserves credit for keeping it alive.The most mournful realization generated by How to Fight Anti-Semitism involves the fantastic resilience of this disease and its protean nature, which augurs a fight that is decidedly unlikely to culminate in a decisive victory. To the contrary. Anti-Semitism is a plague whose latent tenacity ensures that Jews will not enjoy a quiet life anytime soon, but are rather condemned to live in a kind of exile — even if they happen to reside in the “safe haven” of the Jewish state.As this malignant disease is confronted and engaged, the ability of Jews and philo-Semites to hold a tension within themselves between vigilance and realism is vital. Weiss’s book is unbeatable at showing that “never again” is a necessary but insufficient responsibility of Zionism. “Jews did not sustain their magnificent civilization because they were anti-anti-Semites,” Weiss sagely observes. There is a growing peril in allowing an imagination of disaster to disorient Jews and obscure their duties and interests in the world beyond mere survival.It has been said that Jews must have a bag mentally packed, ready to flee. This paranoia is deeply embedded in the Jewish psyche, and for understandable reasons. Although past generations of Jews could be forgiven for harboring that mental luggage and little else, in fact their achievements proved to be more formidable and enduring; for modern Jews, even while they attend to their perennial fears — and their fanatical enemies’ designs — of a world without Jews, it is important also to bear in mind that Hitler is dead, and there is work to be done outside the realm of security. Modern Jewish power has furnished the moral space to advance and vindicate modern Jewish values.The peculiar coincidence of great power but also abiding vulnerability demands the acknowledgement, after Jewish fashion, of a rich irony. In his essay “Why We Remain Jews,” the philosopher Leo Strauss laid great emphasis on the tenuousness of existence as well as the illusion of salvation. He argued that “the Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption.” The absence of redemption should recommend to Jews (and their well-wishers) a vigorous pursuit of self-defense and self-respect that recognizes ultimate security as a mirage.As the political center gives way to the ethno-nationalist Right and the anti-colonialist Left, which feed off of and reinforce each other, Weiss and many Jews have begun to ask the breathless question: Could it happen here? Gentiles should by all means join them, though “it” will not be a totalitarian future replete with book burnings and goose-stepping soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division. It is safe to surmise that America remains firmly against that “plot,” even as the erosion of trust in the institutions of free government, at home and abroad, is well under way. If this cycle persists or accelerates, it will be a striking historical anomaly if the Jews do not suffer grievously, though this time their suffering may not be appreciably greater than the rest of ours.');
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In era of legal pot, can police search cars based on odor?');
document.write('Sniff and search is no longer the default for police in some of the 33 states that have legalized marijuana. Traditionally, an officer could use the merest whiff of weed to justify a warrantless vehicle search, and whatever turned up — pot, other kinds of illegal drugs, something else the motorist wasn't allowed to have — could be used as evidence in court. The result is that, in some states, a police officer who sniffs out pot isn't necessarily allowed to go through someone's automobile — because the odor by itself is no longer considered evidence of a crime.');
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W.African leaders agree billion-dollar anti-jihadist plan');
document.write('West African leaders on Saturday announced a billion-dollar plan to fight the rising problem of jihadist violence in the region, at a summit in Burkina Faso. The plan, to be funded from 2020 to 2024, was announced at end of the Economic Community Summit of West African States in Ouagadougou, where the ECOWAS nations were joined by Mauritania and Chad. ECOWAS had decided to mobilise \"the financial resources of up to a billion dollars for the fight against terrorism\", said Niger\'s President Mahamadou Issoufou.');
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Hong Kong activist seeks U.S. support for pro-democracy protests');
document.write('Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong said on Saturday he was seeking the support of U.S. lawmakers for the demands of his fellow protesters who have led months of streets demonstrations, including a call for free elections. Wong, who spoke to Reuters in New York ahead of a planned visit to Washington, led Hong Kong\'s pro-democracy \"Umbrella Movement\" in 2014. The latest protests, which began over a now-withdrawn extradition bill but grew into demands for greater democracy and independence from mainland China, are mostly leaderless.');
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